The Lady In The Van

I have a little over six weeks left of this blog to do and find myself crawling towards the line. Here's half a film review. Today I caught an early afternoon screening of "The Lady In The Van". It's the "mostly true" story of Alan Bennett allowing a local homeless woman to park her van on his front drive, where she proceeded to stay for fifteen years. It's not particularly lofty fare but I enjoyed it, thanks to a warm and witty screenplay from Bennett and excellent performances from Maggie Smith as the titular character and Alex Jennings as Bennett. Jennings plays two Bennetts, as the man living the events and the man writing about them, which results in a tonally strange conclusion. But that's a minor point. I suspect it ticked all the boxes required for the overwhelmingly grey haired audience who had sold the screening out.

I then headed to work for the late shift, catching snippets of an emotional evening at Wembley as England played France. I'm pleased both teams put on a good showing for the occasion, with Deli Alli (making his debut) hitting an absolutely superb swerving strike past his Tottenham teammate Hugo Llloris in the French goal. Also pleased to see Wayne Rooney get back on the scoresheet and hope he can take some form back into the domestic campaign. Not that any of that matters a whole lot. But perhaps it's true that for people like me, "football is the most important of all unimportant things".